Branding higher education

Abstract

As higher education continues to grow, increased competition places more pressure on institu - tions to market their programmes (Adams and Eveland, 2007; Melewar and Nguyen, 2015). Technological, social and economic changes have necessitated a customer-oriented marketing system, and a focus on developing the university brand (Judson, Gorchels and Aurand, 2006). Researchers suggest that, in recent years, university branding has increased substantially (Naude and Ivy, 1999; Binsardi and Ekwulugo, 2003; Melewar and Akel, 2005; Chapleo, 2007). These researchers propose a number of reasons, namely, a consequence to governmental demands on universities to attract and enrol greater numbers of students, rising tuition fees, the proliferation of courses on offer, the growing ‘internationalization’ of universities, escalating advertising costs, financial pressures, and, in many universities, heavy reliance on income from foreign students (Ivy, 2001; Binsardi and Ekwulugo, 2003; Bennett and Ali-Choudhury, 2009). A university’s brand is defined as a manifestation of the institution’s features that distinguish it from others, reflect its capacity to satisfy students’ needs, engender trust in its ability to deliver a certain type and level of higher education, and help potential recruits to make wise enrolment decisions (Bick, Jacobson and Abratt, 2003; Bennett and Ali-Choudhury, 2009; Sujchaphong, Nguyen and Melewar, 2016).